LAHORE: Over 500 dairy farmers from Faisalabad have approached the Lahore High Court (LHC) against the decision of the local government to evict them from the city.

In a writ petition, filed through Usama Khawar advocate, the dairy farmers/milk sellers allege that the decision to push them out of Faisalabad city is arbitrary and illegal. They also alleged that the administrator municipal corporation’s decision is unconstitutional since he is not an elected representative of the people of the Faisalabad Municipal Corporation.

The petitioners include the residents of an agricultural area on the periphery of Faisalabad, outside the municipal limits. They, says to the petition, have neither basic municipal facilities nor sewerage or municipal waste disposal and cleaning system or paved streets.

According to the plea, the petitioners are small dairy producers and agriculturalists who have been cultivating the land, rearing cattle and producing milk for decades without any state assistance. The state, instead of lending a helping hand and assisting the petitioners in the great public service, is determined to destroying organic cottage industry and the community, it alleges.

Say PTI MNA resorting to political victimisation

It pleads that the unelected state functionaries are determined to uprooting the dairy producers, destroy livelihood of thousands of hardworking citizens and push them into poverty and displacement through its illegal, mala fide, discriminatory and politically-motivated coercive actions.

According to the petitioners, their harassment and the attempt to destroy their livelihood is nothing but political victimisation.

“It is being carried out at the behest of local MNA Khurram Shahzad, belonging to the ruling PTI, who had lost his election from petitioners’ polling station,” claimed the petitioners.

The petition argues the municipal corporation is invoking a repealed statute, the Punjab Local Government Act, 2013 against the petitioners without following due process of law. It asks the court to set aside the impugned directive/notification issued by the administrator municipal corporation being unconstitutional, without jurisdiction, illegal, and of no legal effect.

Justice Shahid Waheed will take up the petition on today (today).

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2019